[fpc-pascal] FPC Graphics options?

[Jon Foster]

On 05/15/2017 03:27 PM, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
> On 2017-05-15 22:50, noreply at z505.com wrote:
>> Graeme will need to clarify whether he was trying to be harsh on FPC
>> entirely, or just specifically in some areas.. :-)
>
> I'll try and clarify... I believe FPC generates slow (or slower than 
> Delphi, GCC and Java) code no matter what. The saving grace is that you 
> don't really notice it on normal event-based desktop applications. 
> Writing a game is a whole different story. Games are way more sensitive 
> to performance.
>
> Now the game I wrote, was a desktop GUI application. It was slow under 
> Linux, FreeBSD and Windows. So the results were consistent, no matter 
> what GUI API was used.... Be that fpGUI (via GDI), fpGUI (via X11) or 
> LCL-GTK2. In all cases, game rendering was to a memory image, then once 
> done, that memory image was bitblit to the Window Canvas.
>
> The Java and GCC versions did the same, but were faster.
>
> That's all I can say about. Make your own assumptions - read into it any 
> conspiracy theories or what-not. ;-) At this point I don't really care, 
> as I already moved on with that project, using OpenGL instead (both for 
> Java and Object Pascal).
>
I think the key word in Graeme's complaint is "game". And I'm willing to 
bet that most of his envisioned gaming scenarios deal with a lot of 
floating point math and the more advanced math functions. A quick glance 
over his example code and I'm willing to bet that the "math" unit providing 
the sqrt(), cos(), sin() and others is the bottle neck. But that's just a 
knee-jerk reaction. Seems to me I read a while back that a ton of effort 
had not gone into them.

There are only two software projects in the world that continue to impress 
me with each new release: the Linux Kernel and FPC, which amuses me since I 
remember the first version of FPC I saw. '99 I think it was. I laughed and 
moved on. I wish I had the time provide some concrete info on where 
Graeme's problem is because I'd really like to see FPC shine here too. But 
it will probably be a while before I can give it proper treatment.

-- 
Sent from my Debian Linux laptop
Jon Foster
JF Possibilities, Inc.
jon at jfpossibilities.com